28 Headquarters

Before Tien had time to change her mind, Saka was saying, ”Take a breath!” and he pulled her into the waterfall after him. Tien gasped as sheets of icy water splashed over her, but almost immediately she was pulled beyond the falls, onto dry ground.

There was a dark opening at the back of the waterfall, and they huddled there, dripping wet and shivering, watching the torrents of water thunder down.

“Welcome!” Tien turned to see Baran holding out some large towels. He embraced Andron with a huge smile. “Please to wrap yourself in this towels, my friends. Dry clothes we’ll find you now.” They dried themselves vigorously, exchanging excited greetings with Baran. Then he took their sodden towels, and hung them over some strategically placed branches that had somehow been secured to the side of the opening.

“It looks like you tired be,” he said sympathetically. “Sleeping time is soon for you. But first, come with me, so to eat and tell us your stories. We want to hear of your days.” Tien took his outstretched hand, and allowed herself to be led further in behind the waterfall. This must be a cave, she thought, ducking her head as she stepped in. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, so she stepped carefully after Baran. The cave’s dim light brightened, and Tien saw that there was a lamp near the back. They turned down a narrow hallway lit with lamps and they followed this along till it opened up into a large area that seemed to have a natural light. Looking around, Tien saw that, in two of the cave walls, large panes of glass had been inserted. As water streamed in a silent shower outside these windows, pale sunlight flooded in.

The cave seemed to be connected to several smaller caverns, and it was a hive of activity, with about a dozen men and women bustling around. Work halted when they caught sight of their old friends. They pounced on Fen and Saka with delight, and crowded around Andron, shedding tears of joy. Tien stood a little apart, with a false smile fixed to her face. I don’t belong here, she thought. These are Saka and Fen’s real friends and their real life. Flip came to stand beside her, and she flashed him a grateful smile as he gave her hand a quick squeeze.

***

They all sat around on the roughly hewn benches, relaxed and thoughtful after refreshments; waiting for Andron’s story. He reclined on a single chair, his eyes closed and his head resting against the chair’s cushioned back. After a time, he sighed and opened his eyes, looking around at each of them with a tired smile.

“Thank you all, my dear ones. I am indebted to you for the risks you took to find me.” He paused to sip at his tea. ”I am eager to hear what has transpired in my absence.”

There was a brief silence before Saka said, “Well, I told you most of our news on the way here, but I’ll quickly summarize for the others. The Parthans have been kidnapped and dosed up with Thelpy tablets, which work like a truth serum. They Parthans are now being questioned about the whereabouts of their ancient tapestries.” Andron nodded. “Though,” Saka added, “according to Lumin, it is unlikely that the Parthans actually know where the tapestries are hidden.”

“The twist is that Wiggo, Phan’s new medical advisor, is secretly working for Thorasco, the emperor of a distant land. Wiggo is manipulating Phan’s hatred of the Parthans to benefit Thorasco. We are not certain, but I suspect that somewhere in the grand scheme, Thorasco’s desire is to render the whole of Pendelethe helpless, and that is when he will strike.”

Andron listened and nodded, seemingly unsurprised. He rubbed his chin. “Yes, I feared this was the case, but my suspicions had not been confirmed, in regards to Thorasco’s involvement. It explains why Wiggo had to make me disappear. He needed to gain close access to Phan.”

“But why does Phan hate the Aryks?” Tien cried out. “Is there a reason?” She flushed as every pair of eyes looked at her, but kept her gaze resolutely on Andron. She needed to know. At first Tien didn’t think Andron had heard her question. He sat so still, with one finger tapping his lips.

But then he looked over at her and said, “Your people came and settled in Pendelethe from Oquis. You know that?” He looked around, and seeing their affirming nods, he continued.

“Years earlier, when one of Phan’s ancestors, King Sharva, sailed the Plysmin Sea, he fell in love with and married an Oquit girl, named Aryk. She became his second wife, as he was a widower. Because his land was large and wealthy, he brought Aryk’s people across in shiploads, rescuing them from certain defeat at the hands of a rival nation.”
No one interrupted Andron.

“The Oquits lived in harmony with the land, and their farms in Pendelethe soon prospered. But Sharma’s teenaged daughter hated her stepmother bitterly; especially when Aryk gave birth to a son. That was something her dead mother had not been able to do, and as crown princess, she felt her right to the throne was threatened, and that her stepbrother was their father’s favourite. This bitterness was passed on through the generations, and eventually its poison infected Phan. He had his own bumbling plans to thwart the thriving Parthans, but it appears that Thorasco, got wind of this weakness in our king’s armour. And as Saka has just said, he has planted Wiggo in Phan’s court to make sure the job is done properly. This will set the scene for Thorasco’s eventual takeover.”

Tien listened in stunned silence, trying to let it all sink in and make sense. She had been taught that her ancestors the Oquits had been invited to come to Pendelethe to help farm the land there. How was it she had not been told the truth? Did any Aryks know?

Saka was saying, “Andron, you have the antidote to the Thelpy?”

“But I don’t” said Andron heavily. The others slumped in dismay, staring at him. Tien tasted bile deep in her throat. Renda had said that the drug was eventually fatal, if an antidote was not administered.
“Look I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up,” Andron said, glancing at Tien. “But I had a lot of time to think in the box. The name of the drug Renda told us about, kept running through my mind. In Pendelethe, herbalists use a simple system for naming their potions, whereby they can remember the key ingredients they used. I won’t bore you with that now. But I wondered if Wiggo may have used a similar system. Therefore the name of the potion becomes significant.” His voice was excited, and Tien realized that her heart was beating fast. Was this going to be good news after all?

“Now in Renda’s message, he spelt the name of the tablets like this.” Andron scribbled ‘Uss steabo, spraegyen. Batch no. 22221’ on a sheet of parchment, and leaned back so the others could see.

“It looks confusing, I know,” he chuckled as he saw the blank expressions on his friends faces. I’ll hurry along to the good bit. Now, in the system I use, the potion is always given a name that is two words in length, both of which contain exactly the same number of letters. So I joined the first two words together, to make two words the same length, like so.”
He wrote Usssteabo Spraegyen underneath his other writing.

“I believe Wiggo had used my system, with only some slight changes. I think that the first word, ‘usssteabo’, contains the first letter of each vital ingredient, and that the second word, ‘spraegyen’, contains the last letter of those same ingredients. Furthermore I think that the five digits at the end… here,” he pointed at the batch number. “These mean that there are five ingredients. The first four ingredients are two words each. The fifth ingredient is only one word. I’ll draw it so you can see what I mean.”

“OK,” he drew as he spoke. “The words ‘usssteabo spraegyen’ can be written out like this:

U___s S___p
S___r S___a
T___e E___g
A___y B___e
O___n

He touched the top letter. “The ‘U’ from the first word is the first letter of a two-word ingrediant. The last letter in the first word of that ingrediant is ‘s’, the first letter in the last word:”
He glanced around at them. Tien tried to look understanding, but it was too much to take in, and she stifled a yawn. After a hot meal, she felt sleepy. She sipped at her water.
“I will get to my point quickly.” Andron smiled. “Now all I had to do was fill in the blanks. I could only come up with one ingredient in each case that fit the system, and also made sense in the light of how the potion is used.”

“What are the ingredients?” Flip asked, his face eager.

“This will fascinate you, Flip. They are: Upas sap, Salamander saliva, Tree eggs, Agony bubbles, and Ondin.”

Tien had never heard of any of these, but Flip beamed. “I’ve never heard of agony bubbles, but the others are rare and difficult to find. Are we sure they are all accessible in Pendelethe?

“We will need to investigate that.” Andron mused. “but I am sure that once we fetch my vial of the Tears of Immo and add it to these others, we will have the makings of an antidote.”

“Can you tell us about the tears, Andron?” asked Fen, who had been listening quietly. “We read about them in one of Lumin’s books.

“Prince Immo of the Empire of Zilem,” said Andron, as a gentle smile dimpled his face.

“Huh?”

Andron’s eyes focussed. ”Fables of the empire of Zilem have been told for many hundreds of years.” He told them the story of Prince Immo’s trip to Oquis and they listened without interruption.

“So where is this empire?” Saka asked in the stillness that followed Andron’s tale.

“Closer than you might think. To get there you must first go through the Locked Lands, whose borders are not far from here.”

“Has anyone from Pendelethe been to the Locked Lands?” Fen asked.

“Never, as far as I know. The Locked Lands started out in the same way the quarter did,” he explained. “A place for what Pendelethe called the lesser tribes, meaning those people groups and beings in Malak that the main three tribes did not want.”

“So it was the three tribes of Pendelethe who locked the land off?” Saka asked.

“Exactly!” Andron nodded. “Though you won’t read that in any history book. It is a forgotten page of our past. And one we need to re-examine.”

“Yes and we need to locate the tapestries.”

Tien barely heard what Fen said. All the talk about Immo had reminded her of their time with Lumin. His parting words echoed in her head: ’Read the horse herder’s words carefully. Then make a plan.” What did that mean. Which of the horse herder’s words? He’d written a whole book. Then in a burst of clarity, Tien knew. She babbled slightly, trying to get the thought out before it evaporated: “Remember what the horse herder wrote about the blessings?” she said.

The others looked at her, and then Fen said, ”You mean about what they were?”

Tien nodded. “Yes. What were they, again?” Her voice trembled.

“Fruitful labour was one,” said Fen.

“Yes. Trust you to take the one I remember, Fen,” Saka teased. “Tien, the book is in my pack. Let’s look them up.”
He hurried off. When he returned he opened the horse herder’s book to the page and read: Each tapestry provided a different blessing. One was fruitful labour, one was creativity, one was knowledge, and one was harmony: and we could all feel the magic working.
He looked up comprehension dawning.

“You see a pattern, too?” Tien asked excitedly. He nodded.

Tien turned to the others. It was so obvious; they had been crazy not to see. “I don’t think the tapestries are just in Partha,” she began. “Maybe only one is: the tapestry of fruitful labour.”

Fen was looking wide-eyed. “The tapestry of creativity is in Tira, then.”
“Which leaves the tapestry of knowledge somewhere in Pasco.” Laughed Saka. Then he frowned. “What about the last one, the tapestry of harmony?”

“Maybe you’ll find that out, as you journey to get the first three.” Andron suggested.
“There is a lot of planning and hard work ahead,” Flip sighed.
“Yes, lad, there is, but we will make a plan. If we work together, we may get this done before Thorasco learns of our intentions and the tapestries.” Andron smiled. “But for today, we rest and get our energy back. “

Tien took a long drink of her water. Rest. That sounded good. The voices of the others faded as she succumbed to her heavy eyelids and saw her family’s dear faces in her mind. I’m Ok, she told them silently. And I have got some friends who are going to help me rescue you. Hold on and don’t give up.
Then with the peacefulness of one who has hope, she drifted off to a dreamless asleep.


The End

© 2006 by Shelly Taylor